The present invention concerns the on-board configuration for a management system of an aircraft (for example an airplane). This may for example be a flight management system, a navigation system, a system for managing an aircraft on the ground, a maintenance management system or other system.
To make a flight, the crew has at its disposal a certain number of documents which may be directly available on board the aircraft or which may be brought on board the aircraft by the crew at each flight.
The documents available on board are for example:
the technical documentation of the aircraft (description of the systems and procedures, tolerances, MEL, which stands for Minimum Equipment List, CDL, which stands for Configuration Deviation List, or other document),
the operational documentation of the company utilizing the aircraft,
the performance on take-off, landing and in flight, and/or
the navigation and airfield maps.
The documents provided by the pilot for a given flight are for example the flight folder (flight plan, meteorological maps, or other documents).
In aircraft, the flight management system (of which the abbreviation is FMS) enables a flight plan to be constructed and followed while taking into account constraints on aeronautical navigation and performance relative to the aircraft and its environment.
The flight management system forms part of the avionic system of the aircraft integrated into the cockpit, that is to say the on-board electronic system in the aircraft which has been certified for piloting.
For example, to parameterize this flight management system, the crew has documentation at its disposal for computing the performance of the aircraft on take-off and on landing.
This paper documentation takes the form of tables and charts. It enables estimation of the performance parameters useful for the configuration of the flight management system to undertake take-off and landing, based on aircraft and environmental data.
The aircraft data are for example:
the loading parameters of the aircraft: mass and mass distribution, quantity of fuel taken on board, and/or
the configuration of the aircraft: systems used affecting the performance of the aircraft (devices using up the power of the engines or degrading the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft) and systems that have failed or are absent and which affect performance.
The environmental data are for example:
The parameters of the runway used: state of the surface (type of surface and state according to the weather), slope, type of approach used in the case of a take-off, obstacles along the path of climb or descent, and/or
the weather conditions: temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind.
The flight data are not necessarily exactly those given as input for the tables and charts. The crew thus chooses values from its documentation that are as close as possible to the real situation to estimate the performance parameters for take-off and for landing.
The estimated performance for take-off and landing are used in particular to:
ensure that the available runway length is sufficient, and/or
perform the take-off or landing maneuver at the speeds and slopes given by the computation.
These data may also be input into the FMS for managing the flight plan.
Formerly, the documentation was transported by the pilots in a bag. They only used paper format to carry out the computations of parameters to configure the flight management system.
The pilot chose an input value from among those given in the tables of the paper documentation, trying to get as close as possible to the value he needed.
The pilot then estimated a value close to his results by increasing or reducing them according to the disparity relative to his input data. In the end, the results obtained were not fully optimized.
Furthermore, a limited number of input parameters could be taken into account. Adding parameters to refine the results required adding more tables and computing steps, which rendered the configuration more complex.
With the use of the paper format, the computation of the parameters was entirely separated from the flight management with the avionics of the aircraft. Indeed, the pilot had to take the input data from his systems in his paper documentation, perform his computation manually then copy back the performance data into the flight management system interface. This created a risk of error and broke the workflow with the avionic system of the aircraft, which limited the ergonomics of the cockpit.
More recently, the documentation contained in a bag has been replaced by a computer device designated by the initials EFB (for “Electronic flight bag”). The EFBs enable computations of high precision to be carried out thanks to the use of more complex and precise computation formulae, which is not possible with the paper format and the use of charts.
A current EFB, as illustrated in FIG. 1, takes the form of a computer 10 (for example a portable PC, a tablet or other device), with a dedicated screen enabling documents and maps to be viewed as well as the use of software applications for calculating performance for each phase of flight (mass and balance, take-off performance, landing performance, performance in flight, or other performance).
The EFBs may be connected to the avionic system, for example via a connection cable 12 in order to retrieve certain general avionic parameters such as the origin and destination of the flight for example. This connection is thus made in a single direction, the data going from the avionic system to the EFB.
The EFB is considered as a system belonging to “the open world”, that is to say it does not belong to the avionic system.
The open world systems may be disposed in an aircraft for use dedicated to piloting or to the provision of functionalities in the passenger cabin. They may or may not be certified. It is possible for these systems not to require certification in terms of the DO 178B standard. However, in order to be used in flight, an operational approval delivered by an aviation authority may be necessary.
Furthermore, the development of open world systems may rely on consumer technologies, such as so-called “COTS” technologies (COTS standing for “Commercial Off-The-Shelf”). This development is sometimes based on computers of “PC” type (PC standing for “Personal Computer”).
The open world systems may enable the integration of applications developed by developers other than the manufacturer of the system (for example airline companies, specialist companies or other companies).
The EFB is a device operationally approved by the local authorities of each country. The EFB is thus independent from the avionic system integrated with the cockpit.
As the EFB has been operationally approved, it profits from flexibility in the management of its data and its updates as well as in the developments to its user interface. Nevertheless, communication with the avionic system (which by contrast is certified) is restricted. The EFB may receive data from the avionic system without sending any.
Thus, a current EFB of class I or II cannot supply data to the avionic system, for example to configure a flight management system with parameters it has computed.
The inability to supply EFB data to the avionic system leads to a crew procedure in which, after supplying of the results by the PF (Pilot Flying) to the avionic system, the PNF (Pilot Non Flying) must check the exact similarity between the data supplied to the avionic system and the data computed by and available in the EFB.
On account of this one-way communication, the pilot must necessarily transfer the parameters computed by the EFB to the avionic system (for example the flight management system).
On the other hand, the EFB is an “open world” device, which does not have the same level of security as the constituents of the on-board avionic system such as the flight management system FMS. It may thus retrieve certain input data from the avionics but cannot send back any, due to the risks of data corruption. The pilot must therefore manually copy computation results into the user interface of the flight management system FMS.
Furthermore, the quantity of input data which may be copied from the avionics depends on the type of EFB and the aircraft. The limitations inherent to the main data bus greatly limit the communication with a conventional computer. The data bus in aircraft are not always compatible with the data busses of conventional computers (that is to say that are non-specific to avionic systems).
Furthermore, the EFB user interface is presented on a different screen to that of the FMS. This is also the case of the keyboard (not shown) and of the touchpad (not shown) of the EFB which constitute an interface independent from the keyboard 13 and the trackball (not shown) of the FMS. There is this a break in the workflow which obliges the pilot to pass from one peripheral to the other to prepare his flight plan on the FMS, to carry out his performance computation on the EFB and include the computation results in the FMS.
Lastly, the computation capacity of avionic systems is limited, which may rule out solutions in which the optimized performance computation would be fully integrated into the avionic system. The computations to perform would not be performed in optimum conditions, as is the case with open world computers, which by contrast do have the necessary computation capacity.
Thus, there is a need to improve the configuration of the management system for aircraft, in particular the flight management systems.
The present invention lies within this context.